Judging by his pumpkins, Joel Holland is a seriously sincere guy.

Eat your heart out, Linus.

Holland, a retired firefighter and Puyallup-based farmer specializing in giant pumpkins, again made his semi-annual delivery of a super-sized specimen of his trademark enormous fruit to the downtown Winslow Johansson Clark Real Estate office Tuesday.

This year’s monster tipped the scales at a whopping 1,339.5 pounds.

Picked on the last day of August, Holland said this particular pumpkin was first displayed at the Washington State Fair earlier this year.

“Probably a couple hundred thousand people got to see it there,” he said. “This was one of the nicer looking ones we had, for display purposes, so we just kind of saved it for [Johansson Clark]; kept it indoors so it wasn’t out in the rain.”

The semi-yearly arrival and coordinated delivery involving Holland and at least one forklift operator, on loan from the Washington State Ferry shipyard maintenance facility, to the sidewalk outside Johansson Clark Real Estate has become a much-loved quirky community tradition, a seasonal spectacle which did not fail to once again draw a small crowd of curious passersby earlier this week.

“Is that real?” exclaimed one young woman, busily snapping pictures with her phone.

At the peak of their growth cycle, Holland’s largest pumpkins can gain 30 to 40 pounds a day — for as long as two weeks at a time. They tend to grow better in hot, wet weather, he said.

The average pie reportedly contains about two pounds of pumpkin, meaning the giant currently outside Johansson Clark Real Estate could make about 669 and one-half pies.

The pumpkin is expected to remain on display downtown through early November.

Holland himself is something of an icon in the giant pumpkin world, a two-time record-holder.

In 1992 he took the record for biggest pumpkin ever grown, but was soon dethroned. He reclaimed the title, however, just last year by coming to market with a truly god-sized gourd weighing 2,363 pounds.

“Last year we had the largest in the world for that year,” he said. “And it was actually the largest pumpkin ever grown outdoors. There had been one a couple years previous in Europe that had been greenhouse-grown for the house season [that beat it].

“That [one] we took down to Half Moon Bay, California (to the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival,” he added. “They pay $7 a pound down there, so it came out to over $16,000 for the pumpkin.”

The freakish fruit garnered national attention quickly, and was even taken on a cross-country road trip.

“They wanted it in New York City for that Kelly and Ryan show (Live with Kelly and Ryan), so one of the pumpkin growers had a flatbed truck and he left Half Moon Bay on a Sunday night and they wanted it by Wednesday,” Holland said. “In like two and a half days we went all the way across country with it.”

How does Holland explain the seemingly universal fascination with giant pumpkins?

Actually, he doesn’t.

“I guess it’s just the season and you know people enjoy seeing something that’s so large, especially if they haven’t seen a big pumpkin before,” he said. “It’s kind of amazing that they can grow that big in one season.”

The bulging behemoth in Winslow is a bit more cream-colored than some displayed in previous years, a trend which Holland says has not gone unnoticed by growers.

“This one’s not super orange, but a lot of them are turning out kind of cream-colored now, not just for us, but for the giant pumpkins in general,” he said. “The light colored ones do seem to weigh heavy for their size, so I think there’s been a lot of crossing, cross pollinating, to get the heaviness into the pumpkins, and along with that came a slight color change as well. Every once in a while we still get a nice orange one, but this is probably a little above average as far as what we’re seeing now for orange.”

Holland sells books, fertilizers, seeds and growing supplies through his website, and also shares photos of giants passed and growth in progress.

For more information about Holland and his products, or advice on how to grow your own giant pumpkin, visit www.hollandsgiants.com.